The feel of a warm towel against the skin immediately after a shower or a bath is a pleasurable experience and eases the transition one feels as they transition from the warm shower or bath to the cooler ambient air.
A warmed towel serves to offset the well known chilling effect due to evaporation of water from the body after showering, even at normal room temperatures. Furthermore, numerous circumstances arise, especially in chilly environments, where the convenient availability of a warmed towel whenever needed could become an important factor in the well-being, health or survival of individuals who may be frail or under medical treatment, and thus vulnerable to thermal shock between showering (or bathing) and drying. Additionally towel warmers not only warm and/or dry textiles to enhance comfort, but also prevent prolonged dampness in articles of clothing or towels that could promote growth of mold or mildew. Thus the consistent use of towel warmers in bathrooms has a positive impact on indoor air quality.
However, the sensation of a warm towel is typically only enjoyed in one's home, because one has managed to complete a shower shortly after having run a load of towels through a washer and dryer.
Existing towel warmers are generally constructed as a series of horizontal bars that contain a heating mechanism, or as an enclosure in which hot air is blown or forced into to warm or dry towels, fabrics, or articles of clothing. As shown in FIG. 1, a series of horizontal bar electric towel warmers are depicted. In prior art FIGS. 1A-1C wall mountable towel warmers are shown, while prior art FIG. 1D shows a floor mounted electric towel warmer.
However, the available tower warmers of FIG. 1A-1D inherently do not provide even or total heating to the surface of a towel. In towel warmers that depend on horizontal heating bars to warm a towel, only the small portion of the towel that physically contacts the heating bars is warmed efficiently while the other portions are only slowly warmed through thermal air gradients. Typically only 10% of the surface area of the towel is heated via the heating bars, and the promise of warm towel is not delivered to consumers' satisfaction unless the heating bars or rails are more numerous with a significantly higher density which requires a higher cost of materials and manufacture, including expensive chrome-plated, bent metal technology. In general, the prior art towel warmer designs lead to a high level of customer dissatisfaction. The high consumer dissatisfaction leads to a greater number of product returns, and results in instances of undesired holes left in consumer bathroom walls after returning the product to the store, thereby contributing to further levels of consumer dissatisfaction. Furthermore, the partial application of heat to areas of a towel is not an effective method to achieve even and total heating of a towel. In part, this results because cotton is an excellent insulator, and the most common material from which towels are made. The thermal conductivity of cotton is one half that of asbestos, and one tenth of window glass. As a result, the most efficient method of heating a towel is total immersion of each individual cotton fiber in a heated medium or enclosure: a process that is both cumbersome and impractical in many settings.
Additional disadvantages of conventional horizontal bar electric towel warmers include construction from large amounts of heavy and costly metal, pre-assembly at the factory that leads to larger packaging and higher shipping costs, high energy consumption for low efficiency heating, and difficulty in cleaning.
Thus, there exists a need for a towel warmer that provides even and uniform surface that provides total warming to a towel, fabric, or article of clothing, while being less costly and cumbersome than existing towel warmers.